


Five Names the Ghostbusters Were Called Growing Up

by Lysippe



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lysippe/pseuds/Lysippe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin wasn't the only ghostbuster who had an unfortunate nickname growing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Names the Ghostbusters Were Called Growing Up

**Author's Note:**

> Idk, I don't write gen and I didn't actually realize I was going to write this until I was halfway through writing it in my head, and now here it is a day later because I'm dumb and write fan fiction on my phone because I forget that I own a computer sometimes and ???

i. Kevin

On the first day of school, one of the boys in his class calls Kevin rocks-for-brains, and he isn't really sure what that means, but when he cheerfully tells his mum about the nickname his friends at school have given him, she looks like she's going to cry.

And he doesn't understand, because he had a great first day. He played with his new friends, and everyone laughed really hard when he told them about how the dog in their beginning reader looked like Mike Hat. (And they laughed even harder when he asked why that was so funny. He didn't really get it - Mike was a nice looking dog - but he was glad his new friends thought he was funny.)

And his teacher had already decided that she should give him extra lessons because he was "just such a special boy." His mum doesn't seem happy about this, either, but Kevin's teacher is a nice lady, and he isn't sad to spend more time with her.

But his mum hugs him close and tells him it's going to be just fine, and Kevin just tells her that of course it is, because even though he isn't so sure about this whole writing thing, and he thinks maths is nonsense, he can already tell that school is going to be the best thing ever.

\---

ii. Patty

The kids at school call Patty Brainiac.

She tries not to care, and does a pretty good job of it for the most part. After all, she's gonna go to college, and be a history teacher like Ms. Mills, so why should she care if a bunch of kids who have never even seen the inside of a library think she's weird for liking nonfiction?

But she does care a little, because it also means that she eats her lunches alone, in the corner seat of the crowded lunch tables in the school cafeteria, while everyone else talks around her like she isn’t even there (she might as well not be, for how absorbed in her books she gets). It means that she walks home from school alone every day, and that she doesn't have any friendship bracelets like the other girls, so her library card is her most treasured possession, instead. (Sometimes, the librarian lets her check out adult books, even though she's not allowed. Patty's favorites are the ones about ghosts in New York. She likes the idea that history never really dies.)

So, who cares if the kids at school think she's weird? Patty's got her books, and she's gonna be someone one day, and that's all that matters.

\---

iii. Abby

The first day Abby walks down the hallway at her new school with Erin, someone shouts, "Hey, Ghost Girl's got a sidekick! It's Ghost Girl and Ghost Kid, the loser wonders!"

Erin puts her head down and mutters something that Abby is pretty sure is an apology for her sudden guilt by association, but Abby tells the kid to shut the fuck up.

It's not her best comeback, but it's something. Ghost Kid isn't even a good insult, and Abby is older than Erin anyway.

Erin apologizes at least once every class for the rest of the day, but Abby holds her head high and tells her that it's not her fault their peers are morons, and besides, she saw that brochure from MIT in Erin's backpack and people have to be less stupid there.

She doesn't tell Erin that there's no way she has the grades to join her there.

\---

iv. Erin

Ghost Girl isn’t Erin's first nickname. It all starts in kindergarten, when five-year-old Erin is maybe a little more emotional than necessary about her mom leaving. Unlike the other kids, whose parents walk them into the classroom before leaving, Erin’s mom – always a believer in promoting her child’s independence – drops her off at the long walkway leading up to the school, and drives off.

So Erin arrives to her first day of school ten minutes late (despite having been dropped off fifteen minutes early), alone and lost and confused and sniffling to herself as though she can will away the tears already staining her small cheeks.

She can’t, of course. Nor can she keep the other kids from noticing them.

So when one boy shouts, “Look at the crybaby!” from the back of the classroom right as Erin walks in, there is nothing Erin or her teacher can do to un-ring that bell. No matter how much Erin tries to be brave for the rest of the day – even when her mom is late to pick her up and she is sitting all alone with her teacher in the pick-up zone by the school’s parking lot – Erin Gilbert was Crybaby to every kid in her school, right up until third grade, when word got out that she was in therapy because she kept insisting that she saw a ghost.

And at the time, she is so sick of Crybaby that Ghost Girl seems like an upgrade.

If only she knew.

\---

v. Holtzmann

Jilly Holtzmann earns the nickname screws-loose in middle school shop class, where she is the only girl.

“Get it?” Ricky Hart crows to the class. “She’s screws-loose, because she’s got a few!”

Jilly, who had already resolved to try and shake the nickname her parents had decided on before she was old enough to refuse (unfair), and go by Holtzmann or Holtz or even just Jillian if she can’t make those stick, think that this is a particularly uninspired taunt.

“Humans don’t have screws,” she tells him offhandedly. “And even if they did, I’m better with a screwdriver than any of you. So, screw _you_.”

But Ricky just keeps laughing, obviously having decided that he is the funniest thing ever.

And that’s how it goes.

The nickname follows Jillian all the way through high school, where woodworking classes turned into metalworking classes, a subject at which she excels. She is creative and good with her hands, with impressive attention to detail and an undying love of tinkering with anything on which she can get her hands.

It is there that Jillian spends every lunch break, every free period, and as many days as she can manage after school. And after a few false starts – her shop teacher assures her that even the most talented metalworkers (which Jillian is determined to become) have them – she is off to the races, crafting everything from toy rocket ships to a working gear mechanism.

And then one day, after a particularly rough day in which Ricky Hart (now Rick) went out of his way to walk past her work table every chance he got and sneer, “Hi, screws-loose,” as he passed (Jillian just sticks to her years-tested mantra of “screw you”), she enacts an idea she has been thinking of for several years.

Her shop teacher has left her alone in the lab. (That isn’t technically allowed, but he has tenure and Jillian is his best student, so he says it’s fine as long as she doesn’t set anything on fire. She’s only broken that rule once.) The school is basically deserted except for Jacob the janitor, who occasionally takes some of the figurines she makes for his daughter in exchange for his silence on her blatant violation of workshop safety procedures and misuse of state funds for her own personal gain (apparently her favorite is the rocket ship, and she wants another, if Jillian doesn’t mind, so they can have rocket ship tea parties in space). And Jillian is beyond frustrated with dealing with the same poorly thought out nickname for the last _five fucking years_ , because apparently Ricky-now-Rick hasn’t actually grown any more brain cells since middle school.

She pulls from her pocket a slightly tarnished screw (which she definitely didn’t take from one of the hinges of the locker she never uses), and quickly stamps out a letter “U” from some scrap metal. It takes mere minutes to affix one to the other, and when Jillian looks at the final product – a large pendant attached to a long silver chain – she can’t help but grin stupidly to herself.

She now has her mantra in physical, wearable form, and Jillian Holtzmann plans on wearing it every day to remind Ricky-now-Rick that she doesn’t give two shits about what he calls her.

(The principle makes her take it off the next day, because apparently it’s “profane” and “not school-appropriate.” She doesn’t point out that calling someone screws-loose for five years isn’t school-appropriate, either.)


End file.
